


Rules

by watanuki_sama



Series: Steeped In Sin [17]
Category: Common Law (TV)
Genre: Blood, Brief description of gore and blood, Demon!Wes AU, Discussions of Morality, Gen, Some ableist language, Swearing, mention of child murder, mention of domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 06:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20223154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watanuki_sama/pseuds/watanuki_sama
Summary: Morality is such a difficult concept to master. It’s easier, he finds, if he has some rules.





	Rules

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on FF.net under the penname 'EFAW' on 8/12/2019.
> 
> Continual props to **mizufallsfromkumo** and **warrenkoles** for coming up with demon Wes and giving me such an awesome playground to have fun in. 
> 
> Ableist language are the terms ‘psychopath’ and ‘sociopath’ tossed about in a casual and pejorative way.

_“You’re trying to be tricky. What’s morality?”_  
_“It’s the difference between what’s right and what you can rationalize.”_  
_“Must be a human thing.”_  
_“Exactly.”_  
_—Christopher Moore_

\---

_Rule 1. Protect the children._

There’s a woman’s scream, and the skid of brakes, and then a body flies through the air.

Wes knew from the moment he saw the child that she was going to do something incredibly dumb. She was shifting from foot to foot, head darting like a dog looking for squirrels, exuding that same restless energy Travis always got before he did something stupid like run into a building without backup because _I’ve got you, Wes, what other backup do I need?_

She was five, maybe. Possibly ten. He didn’t know, children all looked so _young_ to him. Small, anyway, nothing more than a baby, and even from across the street Wes could feel that nervous, antsy energy that meant she was going to just _bolt_.

The child’s mother wasn’t paying attention, too distracted by the stroller in front of her and the other whining child hanging off her sleeve. The bystanders weren’t watching, focused on their phones or their companions or the ground under their feet. _Travis_ wasn’t watching, Travis who lived and breathed and would die for children if Wes let him—Travis wasn’t watching, waving his hands and gesticulating as he told a story.

But Wes was watching. Wes watched from the moment he spotted that familiar, restive energy twitching in the child, waiting to be unleashed. 

He was watching, and the second the child ripped free of her mother’s hand, he was moving, darting into the road with preternatural speed. And then— 

Then there’s a woman’s scream, and the skid of brakes, and then a body flies through the air.

Wes hits the ground hard, feels bones snapping, skin tearing. He tightens his arms around the tiny body pressed against his chest, curls in tighter as he slides against the pavement, skids to a stop. Doors slam, voices shout, a woman screams, hysterical and loud and repetitive, and he—

he tries to get up, but his leg crumples beneath him, bone grinding on bone, a flare of pain he can’t suppress quickly enough. There are other injuries, too, grating bone and torn muscle, dark blood oozing crimson, and he blinks, and blinks again, vision going dark, and he is—

is—

he—

is

_h e_

_vulnerable wounded hurting_

Someone touches him.

Someone touches him, and he rises on all fours, spine a serpentine curve. His lips are drawn back in a snarl, a low, guttural rumble falling from his throat. There’s a body, and hands too close, pressing in, _reaching_—

he is wounded, hurting and disoriented, and he is protecting something precious and they are _trying to take it!_

He lashes out, claws catching skin, and a (familiar) voice curses. He hisses, a fierce, protective fury in the sound. He will not move, he will not let them _have_ it, and a space clears around him and the woman is still screaming screaming _screaming_

“Wes.”

The voice is a calm breeze, a soothing balm cutting through the noise. He shudders, turns his gaze and finds a man limned in gold, kneeling on the ground. Too close, _too close_, and another growl rumbles forth, a warning—

“Wes.” The man holds out his hand without fear, without hesitation. “It’s okay, Wes.”

Wes. Wes. Wes. _Three times_, there is power in that, and—

he shudders, blinks, and somehow, with some impossible strength, tendrils of coherent thought come forth, wrapping around the fiery hellborne beast and dragging it back to its proper cage in his chest. It’s not easy—it never is, but especially now, when he’s injured and vulnerable and defensive; the beast fights and howls for every inch lost.

But slowly, oh so slowly, reason triumphs over rage, the beast trapped in the cage of his ribs once more. Sluggishly, streamers of ink slide from his eyes, and for the first time in what feels like hours, he takes breath, shaky and uncertain—but something, a sign that he is, marginally, in control of himself once more. The beast has no need for breath.

“T-ravis,” he gasps, in a voice hoarse as though he’s been screaming and screaming without cease.

His partner nods, all of his normal levity wiped from his face. “It’s okay, Wes.” He continues to hold out his (bleeding) hand (Wes hurt him, clawed his skin, and the beast rumbles in his chest). “You can let go now.”

“I—” Wes looks down, and suddenly understands Travis’s hesitancy, the thick scent of fear salting the air, the hysterical cries of a woman being held back by the crowd.

There is a child beneath him, small and trembling, staring up with wide, teary eyes. 

It’s a blur, the last few minutes. He is immortal, but the shell is fragile, and if he’s not focusing properly, it is possible for him to become as disoriented as any mortal.

But he remembers pain, and the sound of breaking bones, and the terrible crunch of a two-ton car slamming into him. But it was _him_ who was hit, not the small, delicate child, and _he_ can handle an impact like that and walk away.

He sits back.

Slowly, carefully, so as not to rouse the feral black-eyed beast once more, Travis leans forward, taking the child in his arms. He turns, handing her off, and finally, _finally_ the woman stops screaming, scooping her daughter in her arms and sobbing.

Wes looks at Travis, focuses on his partner, on the one spot of brightness in this dirty city street, biting down the rising, terrible fear that wants to lash out at everyone around him, to hurt them before they can get too close and do the same to him while he is vulnerable and weak.

An ambulance rolls up, followed by two police cars, light blazing. The sirens seem too loud, too strident in this silent street. No city street should be this quiet. 

“Travis?” he whispers, hating how small and exposed his voice sounds. But too many people are staring, the weight of their gazes pressing into his skin, and his instincts are too close to the surface.

“Come on, babe,” Travis says, soft and soothing. “Let’s get outta here.” He holds out his hand, and when Wes tries to stand and his leg buckles beneath him, he’s there at Wes’s side, propped up against his ribs. “No worries, Jonelle will patch you right up. Little duct tape and you’ll be good as new.”

“I’m not going to be patched up with _duct tape,”_ Wes says, allowing Travis to guide him towards the ambulance. The vehicle isn’t necessary, not for him, but it _is_ fast, and it will get them to the morgue quicker than walking will. The crowd parts before them like the Red Sea did before Moses; Wes tries to ignore the way the woman clutches her daughter, staring at him with blank eyes, so far beyond terror she’s gone numb.

“That was a good thing you did, baby,” Travis whispers as they pass her. Wes understands where this is coming from; Travis can sense the woman’s fear just as easily as Wes can, and he’s trying to assure Wes that it wasn’t wrong to reveal himself that way, saving a child.

Wes looks at the little girl, safe in her mother’s arms with not a scratch on her, and despite the aches in his body and the rattling, raging roar caught in his throat and the dull throb he can’t quite stifle from his shattered leg, he lets out a long, slow sigh of relief.

“I know.”

\---

_Rule 2. Be kind to animals. Good people are._

Dogs don’t like demons. Something about the way he smells, probably. Maybe the way he moves, or how he sounds. Maybe dogs are too close to humans, too domesticated—maybe they can sense the _wrongness_ in him, the inhumanity, and it sets their hackles up, makes them bare their teeth and back away.

(The first time he met Randi, her dog, trained for attack, could have all too easily gone for his throat. He’s lucky Hudson decided to protect his human rather than lunge—that would have been damage he’d have been pissed to have to recover from. Now he stays in the hall when Travis goes to talk to her, to keep from upsetting the dog. It’s easier that way.)

Cats, on the other hand, have eyes that see into the dark corners of the world, and they hold themselves aloof from the humans they live with in a way dogs don’t. There’s enough of the wild, deep woods within felines that the dark, shifting nature of a demon doesn’t upset them. Dogs will go berserk around a demon; cats simply don’t care.

“You know,” he muses idly, “There are a lot of legends that say black cats are good luck.”

He holds out a hand; the black kitten purrs, arching into his fingers. It’s no bigger than his hand; he can feel every one of its tiny spinal bones pressing into his palm. If he closed his fist and _squeezed_, it would be extinguished in the blink of an eye.

He gently curls his fingers and scratches. The kitten makes a delighted sound and rolls onto its back, exposing its belly. He wonders if his hands feel warmer than a normal human’s, to this tiny, sickly thing. He feels the fire beneath his flesh, burning and burning and burning—is that a comfort to the creature, something to press up against to fight the chill in its bones?

“A black cat on a sailor’s ship was thought to bring good luck,” he muses, feeling the kitten’s contented rumble in his fingertips. “In Scotland, a black cat arriving at someone’s home signaled prosperity, while the Egyptians would have black cats in their homes to curry the favor of the goddess Bast.”

“As fascinating as this is,” a tired voice says across the table, “why are you telling me this?”

Wes looks up. “You like cats,” he says simply.

Kate sighs. “Wes,” she says semi-patiently, strain and unease making the words tight. “It is _three in the morning.”_

“Three-fourteen,” Wes corrects without glancing at his watch. The kitten rolls onto its belly, tiny paws batting at his fingertips. He turns his attention back to the animal.

Kate lets out a long, slow breath. “Wes, why are you here at three-fourteen in the morning with a kitten?”

“Because you like cats,” he repeats, letting the kitten catch one finger and gnaw at the tip.

_“So?”_

“You adopted that cat Travis found at the crime scene,” he points out. The kitten’s sharp little teeth draw a bead of blood in his finger; the rough tongue scrapes over the wound with no hesitation. Wes marvels at this tiny, fearless thing.

After a long silence, Kate asks incredulously, “Wait, are you asking me to adopt this kitten? Where did you even find it?”

“In a box on the side of the road. I didn’t know people still did that anymore.” Wes pauses, frowns thoughtfully. “Better than drowning it in the bay, I suppose.”

Kate pinches the bridge of her nose. “And you couldn’t wait until tomorrow to ask me at work because…?”

“My hotel doesn’t allow pets.”

“Ah. Right Of course.”

He can sense the question on her tongue, the one that goes _Why did YOU bother to save a kitten?_ But she doesn’t ask—she doesn’t dare. Just like she didn’t dare turn him away when he showed up on her doorstep at three in the morning. She is still so wary of him, of what he can do. If Wes were a better person, he’d feel bad about using her fears against her.

If he were a person at _all_.

Because she doesn’t ask, he doesn’t deign to explain. Doesn’t admit that he’d have done the same if it were a bird or a squirrel or even a hated dog on the side of the road, he would have picked it up and taken it—somewhere. Maybe not here, if it were any other animal; but it was a cat, and Kate likes cats.

He doesn’t explain the most important reason of all: that he doesn’t want to see the look on Travis’s face, should Travis find out that Wes walked by an animal in need and didn’t do anything. Travis loves animals.

And Travis so often thinks the best of Wes, thinks that he can be so much more than what he is.

Sometimes, Wes wants to live up to that expectation. Or at least _try_.

Kate yawns, slumping in her chair. “If I take the kitten, will you go away and let me get a few more hours of sleep?”

“Yes,” he promises, and gently pushes the kitten across the table to her.

As he leaves, he sucks the tiny wound on his finger, and the corner of his mouth curls up, ever so slightly.

\---

_Rule 3. Lying is bad._

Wes stares into the fridge.

“Dammit,” Amy snarls, stomping into the break room. “Four hours and we’ve got _nothing.”_

Kate follows in her path, all but slamming the door behind her. “Fucker is a complete psychopath.”

Travis looks up. “Hey! Language!”

Kate waves a dismissive hand. “Oh, don’t get your panties in a twist. Your demon is a sociopath, completely different thing.”

“Besides,” Amy adds, “he doesn’t mind. Do you, Wes?”

Wes looks over the fridge door with a frown. “Someone moved my yogurt.”

“See? He’s fine.” Amy slumps against the wall, kneading her temples. “We’re getting nowhere with this. We can only hold him so long.”

Wes straightens, frown deepening. “Travis,” he says, utterly ignoring the inane conversation otherwise happening, “did you move my yogurt?”

“What? Why would you think that?”

Wes’s frown transforms to a scowl. “Because you’re the only one who would dare. Did you move it?”

Travis blinks, putting on his most innocent, angelic face, the one that has gotten him out of more scrapes than Wes can count. “No, Wes. I would _never_ touch your yogurt.”

Eyes narrowed, Wes cross his arms. “You know I can tell when you’re lying, right? I’m a demon. I can _taste it_ on you.”

“Dude, that’s kind of creepy.”

“Stop touching my yogurt.”

“You’re taking up half a shelf on the fridge!” Travis jabs a finger at said fridge. “Other people have to use these appliances, Wes, you can’t just take over half the fridge because you want to!”

“Don’t. Touch. My. Yogurt.” Still scowling, Wes bends back down, rudely shoving lunchboxes and takeout containers aside so he can replace his yogurt, three-by-three, every label pointing the same way, just the way it should be.

Travis mutters something no doubt unflattering under his breath; Wes doesn’t need to look to know he’s sulking. Wes ignores him.

“Wes?”

Wes ignores Amy as well. He’s been doing it since she walked in, why change that now?

“Wes.”

“Travis, talk to your demon,” Kate snaps.

“He’s not my _pet_, you guys.”

“No, but you’re the only one he’ll listen to.”

With a great, big, put-upon sigh, Travis says, “Wes, will you please listen to what the girls have to say?”

Wes ignores him, too.

“I promise not to touch your yogurt ever again. For at least a week.”

Slowly, Wes looks over the fridge once more, eyeing the two women. “What.”

Kate and Amy share a look. “You…you can tell when someone is lying?” Amy asks, and Wes gives her a solid point for bravery; he knows how much he scares her. Just one point, though.

“Yes.”

Another look passes between them. Wes can almost tell they’re having a silent conversation, no telepathy involved, but he’s not nuanced in facial emotions to understand what they’re silently saying to each other.

He waits.

Amy is the one who turns back to him, and he gives her another two points for meeting his eyes without flinching. “Wes, we’d like your help.”

Wes blinks. He thinks about it. He sees Travis nodding encouragingly at the table.

Then he says, very firmly and emphatically, “No.”

Ten minutes later, he’s standing outside Interrogation room two, with Travis’s arm around his shoulders. It’s amazing, how one flimsy little human can coerce and cajole and manipulate Wes more easily than any demon ever had the power to. Wes has the hardest time in the world saying no to Travis.

“Why am I doing this again?” he asks, tugging at his sleeves.

Travis squeezes his shoulder. “Because, buddy, this guy is a murderer. We know he’s a murderer. We just don’t have the evidence to _prove_ he’s a murderer. So we need you to catch him in a lie so we can find what we need to take him down. Because lying is bad, and it’s _especially_ bad when you’re lying to the cops.”

“But it’s Kate and Amy’s case,” Wes says, one last protest to try and get out of this. “This man getting arrested won’t have anything to do with us.”

“Oh, yes it does.” Travis’s grin is truly wicked. “Kate and Amy are gonna owe us _so big_ after this.” He turns Wes toward the door, giving him a friendly little pat on the back that forces Wes forward a step. “Now go get ‘em, tiger.”

Wes sighs and pushes open the door.

\---

_Rule 3a. Except when it’s not._

“She’s lying.”

The woman across the table bursts into helpless tears. Normally, this is the point when they change their statement, but she shakes her head and repeats the same thing again. “No, no, _I_ killed him, it was me, I did it!”

And he knows it’s a lie, can feel the shape of it in the air, can taste the edges of it on his skin, and if there’s one thing he’s learned it’s that no one likes it when people lie in the interrogation room.

So he blinks and tilts his head and says, “She’s lying.”

Normally at this point Travis shifts his attack and tries to ferret out the lie, work at them until they crack and tell the truth. And Wes is waiting for that here, because she’s saying she killed her husband but she _didn’t_, which means the real killer is still out there. He knows how this works. 

He really doesn’t understand why Travis clenches his jaw and says, “Shut up, Wes.”

Wes’s gaze whips around to stare at his partner. Travis isn’t looking at him, staring at a spot on the opposite wall, and if looks could kill there’d be a gaping hole in the concrete.

“But—”

“Shut _up_, Wes.”

The woman is still crying brokenly, repeating, “I did it, it was me, I did it,” over and over again, and Wes really, really doesn’t understand. It’s almost a relief when Travis says, “If you could excuse us for a minute,” and stands, grabbing Wes’s arm and hauling him into the hall. 

As soon as the door closes, Travis jabs him in the chest. “What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?”

And this, this is not typical either, and it only serves to make him even more confused. “She was lying.”

“I know that!” Travis throws his hands up in the air. “You think I don’t know that?”

Wait, what? “You…what?”

Travis groans, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Of _course_ I know she’s lying, Wes. _Everyone_ knows she’s lying. Poor woman spent twenty years getting beat up by her husband, you think she finally decided to end it _now?_ No. There’s no way she killed him.”

That only serves to make Wes _more_ confused, not less. “Then why…?”

“Because!” Travis runs his hands through his hair, lowers his voice so no one can hear even though they’re the only two in the hall. “Because her son just turned eighteen, so he’ll be tried as an adult, and she doesn’t want to watch her kid go to jail for killing the abusive son of a bitch!”

Understanding, finally, dawns. (To be fair, he never saw the woman’s child, wasn’t able to hear the guilt in his voice and see the weight of a life so recently taken weighing on his soul.) “She’s protecting her child.”

_“Yes!”_ Travis throws his hands up and makes his _Wes has finally got it!_ face. “Yes, she’s lying to protect her child. She’s confessing, and she’ll go to jail so _he_ won’t have to. I don’t like it. But the plain and simple truth is, she _is_ confessing, and without any evidence to back up another theory, I have to take what I got.”

He takes a breath, visibly calms himself down. “So I’m going to go in there. I’m going to take that poor woman’s statement. And you’re gonna sit there, and you’re not gonna say a word. Okay?”

And all Wes can do is nod and say, “Okay,” and he follows his partner inside.

\---

_Rule 3 - Addendum. I don’t understand the rules about lying._

“Hey, Travis, Wes!” Dietz calls happily, stopping by their desks. “You doing anything this weekend?”

Wes makes a vague, annoyed sound, and while he assumes the question is aimed at Travis, it’s always good to nip these things in the bud if he can. Most of his coworkers have gotten used to him (as long he has his pretending-to-be-nice face on), but no one wants to get on a demon’s bad side.

Predictably, Dietz turns to Travis more fully. “I’m having this little party on Saturday,” he says, half-question, half-statement. “I was thinking, if you didn’t have anything going on…”

“Sorry, man,” Travis says regretfully, “I’d love to, but I gotta help one of my moms.”

“Hey, no problem,” Dietz says brightly. “Family comes first.”

“Yeah,” Travis says, and Wes is only half-listening at this point, mostly because he doesn’t actually care. “We’re cleaning out her garage. Could take all day,” and for some reason _that’s_ the part that pings in the back of Wes’s brain, and he sing-songs, “Li—e,” and taps the end of his pen against his lips.

It’s the silence that makes him look up, the sudden cessation of sound. Dietz is still standing there, and Wes still has some trouble reading human faces even after all this time, but he’s radiating hurt and upset. Travis is sitting there, smile stiff as a board, and his eyes are glaring daggers at Wes.

Wes blinks. “What?”

That breaks the tableau, and Dietz is backing away, going, “Hey, no, it’s fine if you don’t wanna come,” but his voice is high and upset, and Travis is rising to his feet, trying to smooth things over, saying, “No, man, it’s not like that—” and then Dietz is gone and Travis whirls on him, eyes flashing, and snaps, “Thanks a fucking lot, Wes.”

Wes blinks, baffled, and says, “What did _I_ do?”

“You told him I was lying!” Travis sinks back into his chair with a groan. “I can’t believe you told him I was lying!”

“You _were_ lying,” Wes points out. “You keep telling me lying is bad. I didn’t know you were exempt from the rules!”

“Okay, first, it’s totally not a rule, more of a—a _guideline_ if anything, and second, it was a little white lie! It didn’t hurt anybody!”

Wes turns and looks back the way Dietz retreated. “Dietz looked pretty hurt.”

“Because you _told him_, dumbass.” Travis makes a frustrated sound and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Look, I’ve been to his parties, and trust, me, they’re a drag. I didn’t want to go to this one. But saying I had something to do at my mom’s gave me an easy way to turn him down without hurting his feelings.” He scowls at Wes. “Lying to get out of a party is a little different than lying about killing someone, okay? So maybe next time you can do me a favor and _not_ call me out like that?”

Wes is pretty sure that makes _no_ sense. Lying is lying is lying, it all feels the same. There’s no difference between a killer’s lie and Travis’s, what did he call it, _little white lie._

But he just blinks and says, “Alright,” and hopes he doesn’t sound as confused as he feels.

Travis shakes his head, grumbling about making it up to Dietz, and Wes makes a face and resumes his paperwork.

Humans. It’s amazing how many things they do that don’t make sense.

\---

_Rule 4. Murder is not an acceptable solution._

“We could kill him,” Wes offers from his perch. He balances on the two-inch rail on the balls of his feet, watching Travis slap handcuffs on Sean Harper, a bit tighter than necessary.

Travis, who has been in a bad mood this whole case, yanks Harper to his feet and glares at Wes. “No.”

Wes makes a small sound and tilts his head, and from the way Harper blanches, there’s too much of the underworld in his movements, too sinuous, too inhuman, too _wrong_. Today has been a bad day for Wes, too, and he’s on the verge, his skin is pulled too thin over his bones and his control stretched taut, ready to snap. 

“Okay,” he says genially, eyes never leaving Harper. “_I_ could kill him.”

Harper pales even further and looks like he’s maybe about to faint. Travis, who is the only one who has never pulled back on days like this, never recoiled the way everyone else does when the human guise falls away and the demon rears its ugly head, meets his eyes, shifting half an inch so he’s between Wes and Harper. _“No,”_ he says again, emphasizing the word, the sharp nasal sound and the smooth roll of his tongue on the vowel.

Wes leans forward, grin stretched too far on his face, sclera dark and inky, but Travis doesn’t flinch. “You don’t mean that,” he purrs, “You _want_ me to,” and he can taste it in the air, the tang of desire, of desperation, of anger so fierce Travis might burn right up. Can taste it, and he’s too close, stretched too thin—_he_ wants it, for Travis, for himself, for three little girls who never had a chance to fight back.

Travis’s jaw tightens, but he lifts his chin and once more says, “No,” and that’s thrice, thrice, thrice which has power but Wes doesn’t let that stop him, just leans a little closer, angled on the rail in a way that defies physics (but physics has no meaning to a being made of brimstone and rage)—and Harper quivers and Wes smiles a predator’s grin.

“No, Wes,” Travis says softly, and his voice shakes too—not from fear, but from the anger, the helpless despairing wrath that will keep him awake at night. “Stop. That’s not justice.”

“It’s the oldest justice there is,” he retorts, voice a husky, flame-torn rasp, and at this, even Travis flinches minutely, but it’s so hard to contain himself when Harper is _right there_. Wes knows the taste of this sin, the sharp, sweet glide of innocence lost, and it enrages him, makes him want to tear and rend and give everything to this man that he inflicted on those little girls—

“It’s _murder,”_ Travis snaps, voice trembling, and maybe he understands, maybe he knows this rage, this desire to break this man apart. Wes doesn’t understand _why_ he doesn’t. Wes knows monsters, _is_ a monster, like recognizes like, and no one cries when a monster dies. There’s no one around to stop him.

No one except Travis, who says, “We have to take him in.”

“And when he gets out?” Wes asks, demands. “When another technicality lets him walk? I can make him stop before he ever touches another girl.” He lets his voice carry, lets Harper hear him, and revels in way the man quivers like a lamb. Oh, how sweet it would be…

“We have to trust the system,” Travis protests, though his heart isn’t in it. Still, he continues, says, “We have enough evidence this time, he’s not going to get out.”

“So you say.” Wes cranes his neck, hisses, fire licking under his skin, familiar and hot and dark, so many things he’s tried to pretend he’s not. “We could make _certain.”_

“No,” Travis says, five times now and that has power too, five points in a pentagram, five fingers on a hand, three and five and NO no NO no NO. “Murder is _not_ an acceptable solution. It’s not the answer.”

Wes waits, watches, a heartbeat, another, _three four five_. “Fine.” He leans back, scoffs. “You humans, letting things like _that_ walk around.” He nods at Harper, who recoils again, tries to put as much distance as possible between them. “I don’t know that I’ll ever understand you.”

“Yeah.” Travis gives him a tired, empty smile. “We’re funny that way.” Unkindly, ungently, he starts hauling Harper to the car. Wes follows, sliding off the rail with a grace born of fire, deadly and sinuous, both dead and alive and ready to devour.

He keeps his hands in his pockets, to himself, but he grins. Murder may not be an answer, but there are so many other things he can do without ever touching the man. And he has the entire car ride to do it.

\---

_Rule 5. Please and thank you are your friends. Use them both until the end!_

“Dietz!” Wes hollers from the door the of the break room, eyes black as pitch and a palpable sense of rage wafting from him. He sees the cops in the closest desks shift uneasily, but his eyes are trained on the man across the room. “Move your damn lunchbox!”

Dietz looks up, expression so obvious even Wes can recognize ‘bewildered’. “What’d I do?”

“It’s on my yogurt shelf. So move it before I shove it down your throat.”

“Wes,” Travis admonishes, coming up behind him with a cup of coffee. “Don’t make me sing the song at you.”

Wes grits his teeth, counts to ten—slowly, black reluctantly bleeding from his eyes as he counts down, because Travis keeps saying it’s not _nice_ to flash black eyes at people, it makes them _uncomfortable_ Wes and I know you find it amusing but that is _not_ actually the goal we want to have when dealing with coworkers—and takes a deep breath he doesn’t need. “Dietz,” he says with an exaggerated, forced politeness, “move your goddamn lunchbox. _Please_. Before I shove it down your goddamn throat.” 

There’s a moment of dead silence in the squad room. Travis makes a waffling motion with his hand and takes a smug sip of his coffee. “We’re practicing the P’s and Q’s this week,” he says cheerfully. “Dietz, would you? He did ask nicely.”

“He threatened me,” Dietz says, in the wondering tones of disbelief.

“It’s a process. We’re working on it. Two days ago he would have chucked your lunchbox at your head.” He grins that charming grin that always makes people do what he wants, while Wes seethes at his side. “So will you move it?”

“I…sure.” Still looking mystified, Dietz gets up and heads for the break room. “No problem.”

A moment later, lunchbox sitting securely on not-Wes’s-yogurt-shelf, Dietz heads back to his desk.

“I _will_ sing the song, Wes,” Travis threatens brightly, and Wes wants to spill his coffee right down his smug, self-satisfied shirt.

Wes growls.

Travis starts humming, threateningly.

Feeling like he’s chewing glass, Wes manages a tight, strangled, “Thank you.”

“Good job!” Travis chirps, more than a little patronizingly, and heads for his desk.

Wes goes to straighten out his yogurt.

“What song?” he can hear Amy ask through the open break room door. He hopes no one knows.

“I think I know.” Dammit, Kate. “It’s on this Sunday morning cartoon my niece watches. Something like…” She hums a few bars. _“Here’s a song about manners, hmm hmm hmm hmm, please and thank you are your friends, use them both until the end.”_

“The end of what?” Amy questions. “Life?”

Kate scoffs. “It’s a children’s cartoon, I think it’s the end of the conversation.”

Wes wants to any this conversation. _Any way possible._

There’s another long silence. No dramatic cataclysm opens up beneath his feet to spare him.

“How old is your niece?” Amy asks.

“Three.”

“Ah.”

Wes presses his forehead against the fridge door and prays for a murder to end his misery. Anybody’s will do. Anything to get him out of this building.

He’s not going to live this one down for a while.

\---

_Rule 6. If you think it’s a good idea, it’s probably not._

“Surely this situation is an exception.”

“Nope.” Travis shoots blindly over the top of the crate they’re hiding behind. The gunfire aimed their way ceases for 3.2 seconds before resuming, a staccato cadence of bullets and hot metal. “A deal is a deal is a contract, babe. So start thinking, ‘cuz if you use your usual methods to get us out of here, I win.”

“I don’t remember kissing a contract with you,” Wes grumbles, but he’s already scanning the room.

_One week,_ Travis had said, _go one week without taking a bullet and I won’t eat a crumb in your car for a month._

_And I get to choose the radio station,_ Wes countered, and Travis had grinned and said, _It’s a deal._

No, a deal is not a contract, but it’s a promise, which is a contract of sorts, and Wes—Wes has never failed a contract in his life. Lost them, sure, not taken them, absolutely, but once he’s agreed, his word is binding. Even without a kiss.

So he scans the surroundings, searching for a foolproof way to get them both out of here without his typical method of barging through the bullets and clearing a path through the shooters. It leaves a lot of holes in his suits, sure, but it’s damn effective.

It’s also absolutely not an option right now. His pride won’t let him fail this one, no matter how inane it is.

“This is my last clip,” Travis says conversationally, sliding said clip into place, “so I hope you have an idea or two.”

Wes grins. “I have an idea.”

“Is it a _good_ one?”

The grin stretches. “Oh yeah.”

Twenty minutes later, they’re standing on the sidewalk as the fire trucks pull up. “Oh my god,” Travis groans, running his hands down his face. “We’re gonna get sued. They’re gonna sue us for _so_ much property damage.”

“It’s just a couple of buildings,” Wes dismisses. “They’ll get over it.”

“They’ll get over it,” Travis scoffs as three more fire trucks pull up. “Sure, right after they sue us to hell and back. No offenc—oh my _god!”_ Attention suddenly diverted, Travis tugs Wes’s jacket open. “You look like you were bit by a shark!”

Wes glances down. There’s a large gash in his side that, indeed, looks a bit like a shark took a chunk out of him. He’d noticed the wetness running down his hip, but he’d thought it was from the sprinklers and put it out of mind.

“Cool.” Wes is a big fan of sharks. He and Travis watch Shark Week every year.

_“Cool?”_ Travis takes a deep breath, pinching his lips together. “You have a giant hole in your side, Wes!”

“But I didn’t get shot,” Wes points out.

Travis stares at him for a long minute. “I hate you. The whole point of the bet was so you _wouldn’t_ get hurt.”

“Well, you didn’t mention _that!”_

Shaking his head, Travis simply sighs again. “You know what? Next time you say you have a good idea, I want you to remind me of this incident so I can tell you it really, really isn’t.” Travis hooks their arms together and heads for the car. “Come on, I stuck some duct tape in the trunk. We’ll get you all patched up.”

“Why is your solution always to use _duct tape_ on me?”

“This stuff is cool, it’s got little devil faces on it. You’ll like it.” Travis pats his arm consolingly, and Wes tries very hard not to feel patronized. But really, _duct tape?_

\---

_Rule 7. When family asks for help, you go. No questions asked._

“No questions at all?” Wes clarifies.

Travis hums, head waggling a little. “I mean, questions like ‘Why aren’t we going to the hospital again?’ or ‘Did all this _really_ fall from the back of a truck?’ or ‘Where did all the blood come from?’ are okay. You know, the big ones. But otherwise, no. No questions asked. You just do it.”

Wes frowns thoughtfully, turning at the stoplight at Travis’s direction. “Why?”

“Because they’re family, man.” Travis holds his hands out, _ta-dah_, presto answer.

Wes taps his thumbs on the steering wheel. “So?”

“So.” Travis leans back, frowning thoughtfully. “So…you don’t have family, do you? What with being an immortal cloud of smoke, huh.”

“I have…brethren.” Wes is connected to other demons through circumstance, but they are kin only because of what they are and the way they were made. Wes would never call any of them _brother_ or _sister_, not the way angels do.

He understands the concept of family, of course. Humans connected by blood or marriage. His body was married, once, long ago, before he took it over, and there were children.

(He hasn’t thought about that in a very long time. He wonders whatever happened to those children.)

“Not the same thing.” Travis strokes his chin. “How to explain…My family is a part of me. They helped build the person I became, little building blocks on the road to Travis Marks. I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for them. So if they need something, I want to be there for them, you know?”

“Even though you aren’t related by blood?” Wes has ties of blood between himself and demons, hands and knives coated in blood and pain and fear, but none of it would ever make him want to _help_ them. There isn’t a single one of his kin he would _help_, and they would repay in kind.

_Helping_ is a concept he never truly learned until he lived among humans; he doubts most of his brethren would even understand.

“Blood ain’t all a family’s made of,” Travis says with a shrug. “It’s people who raised you and molded you, who sat across from you at the dinner table and helped you with homework and talked about girls. It’s the people who were _there_. That means something special.” 

“I see.” Wes ponders this for a few minutes; Travis seems content to wait him out, changing the radio station when the commercials come on.

“I…sort of vaguely understand why you’re helping out,” Wes eventually concedes. “But why am _I_ coming along to help your sister move?”

“Because you can carry a lot of boxes and move heavy furniture by yourself,” Travis says brightly. “You’ll cut the time down in half, at least.”

“She’s not _my_ family, Travis,” Wes points out, in case Travis somehow missed this.

“No, but she’s mine, and you’re mine, so for today, she’s yours as well. So you’re gonna suck it up and do it.” Travis claps a hand on Wes’s shoulder with a grin. “Do it for the fam, man.”

Wes has a snappy retort on his tongue, but he can’t get the words out, because his throat feels a little too tight. For no reason he can see—a quick internal check of his body shows everything functioning as it should. 

Sometimes he doesn’t understand his body’s reactions, reactions that should be completely under his control but _aren’t_. It was just a little statement, nothing to get excited over.

But Travis called him _family_, and Wes may not understand why, but he knows how important that word is to Travis.

“But I don’t _want_ your sister as mine,” he says after much too long a pause. His throat is still a little tight, but he’s confident it doesn’t come through in his words.

Travis gives him a disappointed look and a little ‘tch’ sound. “Wow. That’s just rude, dude. For the record, I don’t particularly want any of your brethren as family.”

“That’s perfectly valid,” Wes responds genially. “I don’t want them either.”

Travis laughs, and the sound is enough to make even this forced _helping_ for a woman Wes doesn’t know bearable.

There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for Travis.

No questions asked.

\---

_Rule 8. It’s okay to break the rules—if you’re protecting someone else._

A single gunshot rings out—_bang!_—and Wes watches with dispassionate interest as the body falls. The hostage screams, sound loud and grating, blood splattered across her cheek like a Jackson Pollock painting.

Travis rushes forward, wrapping an arm around the girl, taking softly, soothing, gentle. He’s guiding her away, distracting her, keeping her from looking back. It leaves Wes in awe, how Travis can so effortlessly manipulate people sometimes.

(Travis Marks would make a very good demon.

Wes will never, ever see that happen, so long as there is fire in his soul.)

Casually, Wes saunters across the room, crouching beside the body. He studies it unblinking: watching the way blood drips from the neat little hole in the dead center of the man’s forehead; watching the way the pool of blood slowly widens, millimeter by millimeter; watching as the last, clinging remnants of life fade from neurons and cells, as the body follows the brain and dies.

“Detective?”

He looks up, and the young officer flinches back, hand dropping to her hip. Too new to have heard of him, maybe, or maybe she’s simply jumpy after the whole hostage system, adrenaline running high. That happens to humans, he’s noticed—they tend to stay on edge long after a situation has resolved, ruled by hormones and neurotransmitters they can’t control. It seems so messy and…_inefficient_.

He blinks his eyes to blue, turning back to the body before his feet. “He’s dead.”

“Uh…yes sir.” The officer seems to feel that’s not quite enough, because she adds, “People tend to stay down with a bullet in their head, sir.”

“I wouldn’t,” Wes says absently, tilting his head as though it might force this scene to make sense. The man is dead, from a bullet to the head. But Wes didn’t do it. He had his gun out, but he didn’t do it.

Travis shot this man _dead_.

Wes is no stranger to paradox. His very existence is contradictory, life and death and fire rolled into one. The humans around him carry their own brand of complexities, perpetually baffling Wes because every time he thinks he understands them, they’ll say or do something that throws everything he thought he knew into doubt.

But _Travis_. Travis is simple. He may do complicated things, feel complicated emotions, but at his core, he is simple and just and _good_, so good it shines from his skin like the sun, warmth and light pervading his senses and washing him clean.

Travis is good. Murder is bad.

But Travis shot this man.

Someone kneels beside him, an aura of blood and anguish sweeping his skin. He doesn’t need to look to recognize Jonelle; she carries the fallen home with her, wears the pain of their deaths on her soul though she had nothing to do with it. Vinegar tongue and razor-blade words, is Jonelle, but she, too, is good.

Maybe she can explain.

“I don’t understand.” He can’t look away, can’t stop staring at the round little hole in the corpse’s forehead, as though if he stares long and hard enough, the answers will emerge as ready as blood and brain matter did as the bullet passed through. “Travis shot him.”

“That he did,” Jonelle says, cool and clinical. Detached. (but she can’t help but get attached, to each and every one of them, and she wears their ghosts like tattoos. it makes him sad, that he can’t relieve her of her burden. he likes Jonelle.)

“He shot him,” Wes repeats, finally turning to look at her, eyes black and fathomless. “But murder is bad.”

That’s the most basic rule, Travis had explained over and over and over. Murder is _bad_, Wes, we can’t kill whoever we don’t like, it’s not justice, they need to _pay_ for their crimes within the letter of the law—legal, written law, not blood law.

Jonelle’s coolness falls form her face, eyes going soft and sad. “Yeah,” she says, the weight of a hundred broken lives in her voice. “It is.”

“But Travis shot him.”

She slowly shakes her head. “I can’t explain this one to you, Wes.” She holds up a blue-gloved hand, cutting off his protests. “I can’t, and I won’t. You need to talk to Travis.” She glances at the door to the street, and somehow, the sorrow beside her mouth gets a little deeper. “But maybe give him a little time.”

She turns to the task at hand, and after a moment, Wes rises. He stalks through the fray, past officers and detectives and out to where Travis is leaning against the wall, watching the hostage in the back of the ambulance. His face is long and tense, and shadows around his eyes make them look haunted, the thousand-yard stare of a soldier at war.

“Travis,” Wes says, launching in without preamble, “you shot him.”

Travis flinches minutely, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening. “Thanks for reminding me, Wes,” he mutters, crossing his arms and hunching his shoulders. This is—defensive, Wes recognizes. Wes doesn’t understand.

“I don’t understand. Why?”

“Why? I’m sorry, did you miss the gun he was holding to that girl’s head?”

“Of course not.” Wes tilts his head to the side, studying his partner. “But Travis. Murder is bad.”

Travis stiffens, anger sparking in his eyes as he swings towards Wes. “Oh my god, seriously? I am _not_ having a morality conversation with you right now, Wes, we are _not_ doing this. Fuck off and talk to _literally anyone else.”_

Wes does not fuck off. After a while, the anger leeches out of Travis, and he slumps back against the wall, crossed arms pressed tight against his body. He doesn’t move until a detective leads the girl towards a car to take her home, and even then it’s just to sigh and slump a little further down.

Wes opens his mouth, hesitates, and pushes on. “I would have taken the shot, Travis,” he says gently. “You didn’t have to do it.”

“You didn’t _have_ the shot,” Travis responds dully. “And I couldn’t take the chance.”

“Travis—”

“Please, Wes.” Travis closes his eyes, leans his head against the wall, and looks like he’s going to collapse any moment. “Please, don’t.”

Wes subsides. But he doesn’t go.

If Travis falls, Wes will be right there to pick him up.

\---

_Rule 9. When in doubt, ask: What would Travis do?_

“Wes? “Travis says, voice ringing with hesitant uncertainty. “What’s this?”

Wes glances up, a glower already in place. “It’d better be my extra-spicy vindaloo, or I am going to have _words_ with that delivery man,” he snaps, reaching for the takeout containers in Travis’s hand.

“Not that,” Travis says, an odd catch to his voice. He’s not looking at the food, Wes realizes. He’s looking at a piece of paper in his hand. “What’s this?”

“The receipt?” Wes peers over, and instantly sees his mistake. That is not the receipt.

That is half a sheet of printer paper, folded in half and half again. That is neat little lines of writing, perfect penmanship Wes recognizes from every report he’s ever written.

_That_ is _personal_ and Travis shouldn’t be rummaging through people’s things. Never mind that Wes tossed his wallet at Travis because it was his turn to pay but he didn’t want to get up. Never mind that it was just sitting in his billfold where anyone could take a peek if they wanted to. Never mind that Wes regularly without thought goes through Travis’s drawers and wallet and life because he’s bored or curious or—well, mostly bored. Travis shouldn’t just be going through his stuff!

“That’s none of your business,” he says haughtily, snatching the paper from Travis’s hand. But gently, so it doesn’t tear. He folds it back into its perfect, precise folds and holds his hand out. “Wallet.”

“None of my business? It’s got my name on it.”

Wes hesitates. “It’s…” _nothing_, he wants to say, but that would be a little too close to a lie for comfort. He’s not supposed to lie. Probably. (Rule 3 is _confusing_, okay.)

“It’s…my list,” he admits reluctantly.

“Your list of…?”

“Of…” Wes scuffs a foot, feeling oddly embarrassed. “Of my…rules. For being a person.”

“A person.”

“A…better person.”

There’s a little choked sound. Wes glances over, real quick, just to make sure Travis isn’t _actually_ choking, and finds Travis just. Staring at him, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

“These—” Travis waves at the paper in Wes’s hand. “These are your moral guidelines?”

Wes shifts. “I suppose you could call them that.”

“And…rule 9 is because…?”

“Well, I don’t have a rule for _everything_, Travis,” Wes snaps, on edge because he’s defensive, defensive because he’s confused. Why is Travis _looking_ at him like that?!

Travis suddenly collapses into the chair, gaping at him. “You mean _I’m_ your moral compass?”

Wes still doesn’t have his wallet. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, not when one of them is holding his list. “Of course.” Why does Travis sound so surprised? “Can I have my wallet back?”

“Why? Why me?”

“…I don’t understand the question.” 

“Why _me?”_ Travis leans forward, earnest and utterly baffled. “I mean, I—I drink, I curse, I lie and cheat and break people’s hearts on a regular basis.”

Wes thinks about this. “…and?”

“And I’m not sure I should be _anyone’s_ role model, let alone someone who needs one as much as you! You should be looking at—at the pope or something!”

“I don’t know the pope,” Wes points out. His awkwardness is slowly being eclipsed by his own perplexion. “I know you.”

“Which is why I shouldn’t be your number 9!”

Ah. This is one of _those_ conversations, is it? The ones where Travis doesn’t realize his own worth and Wes has to explain it slowly and carefully and not too much all at once or Travis will get all overwhelmed.

Slowly, Wes seats himself so they’re at the same level. “Travis,” he says, “You’re a good person. Those are just…things. But you…you’re honorable, and loyal. Everybody likes you, and even if they hate you. You’re surrounded by friends and family. You have a heart a mile wide, and you’d so anything to save people. You’re a _good person_. There’s no one else I’d rather have as my moral compass.”

Travis is gaping again, mouth hanging open, and Wes worries he might have overdone it after all. 

“Travis—”

Travis holds up a hand. “Gimme a minute.” 

The minute drags on. And on. After three, Wes carefully sets his list on the table and opens the closest takeout container. He quickly swaps it out for the other one, then starts on his vindaloo.

“Okay,” Travis finally says, nodding slowly. “Okay. I can work with this. Sure. No big deal that you apparently think I’m amazing—”

_That’s not a secret,_ Wes wants to say but can’t because he has a mouthful of rice, and talking while chewing is just _Bad Manners_. (They had a whole month of lessons about Manners. Wes doesn’t really see the point, they seem like stupid little rules for interaction, but does them only because it seems to put people at ease. The more people are at ease around him, the better to catch them off guard later, if he must.)

“—and you’ve based your whole system of morality around what I would do oh my _god_. That means when you go off the deep end that’s on me too!”

“No,” Wes snaps, manners be damned. He lays his utensil down, a sharp, staccato punctuation to cut through Travis’s budding hysteria. “_No_. What I do is on me. You have _never made_ me do something.”

Travis swallows shakily. “Are you sure? Because I definitely remember a lot of reluctance on your part during the whole Manners Month, and yet I still managed to convince you to do that…”

“Travis.” Wes reaches out, covering his partner’s hand with his own. “You are _good_. And I’m…not. And that’s not your fault. It’s not on you.”

Travis stares at him for a long time, eyes wide and deep and fathomless as the endless ocean. Times like this, Wes curses his lack of ability at reading human expressions; he can’t at all tell what Travis is thinking right now.

But slowly, Travis softens, the edges of his face and eyes gentling, and he smiles, a small, quiet little thing. He pats Wes’s hand, reassuring—and surprisingly calm, like all his previous worries have been banished.

“You’re doing better than you think you are, Wes,” he says, and his voice is just as soft as his face. “And I’m proud of you.”

And Wes may not fully understand _what_ the look on Travis’s face is, but he understands how it makes him feel. It’s soft, and warm, and it makes him think that maybe, deep in his little black heart, he’s not quite as bad as he thinks.

Wes would move the world for Travis, if Travis would keep looking at him like that. He might not even burn it down, first.

Travis does not keep looking at him like that. He pulls his hand free, picks up his fork, and says, “Let’s eat, ‘cuz I’m _starving,”_ and the conversation moves on to more mundane and much less personal topics.

But Wes carries the warmth of Travis’s regard for the rest of the night, and for a long time after, and he vows to do _better_—to live up to the faith Travis has in him.

\---

_Unspoken rule. Protect Travis at all costs._

For a moment, when Wes first enters the darkened room, his heart stutters, a sensation utterly alarming for the fact that, since taking this body, his heart has had no functional purpose in his body whatsoever. There should be no stuttering.

But the sight before him is causing stuttering in his heart and no small amount of alarm. Travis is slumped against a pole, hands tied behind his back, head hanging to his chest. That is not worrisome. What is worrisome is the way he sits, boneless and limp, as though dropped by a careless hand.

Wes has seen too many dead bodies sprawled in this same fashion.

He takes another step closer, and the tightness in his chest eases, now that he can make out the slow, steady rise of Travis’s chest. A soft utterance falls from his lips, a fervent exhalation of relief, guttural and raspy in a tongue that was never spoken on this planet. Travis is alive.

Travis is alive, and at Wes’s words, his head comes up, his breathing abruptly shifting. “Wes,” he says, smiling a lopsided grin that has everything to do with the swollen, blood-caked lump one side of his face has become. Wes feels another stutter in his heart, and the anger—banked from the moment he first stepped into this room—roars back with a vengeance, threatening to consume him. That someone would _dare_—

“Wes,” Travis says again, as if he can’t feel the heat of Wes’s wrath from across the room. “I knew you’d come.”

That simple faith is enough to bank the fires once more, muting to something softer, gentler. Still fire, but a bonfire instead of a wildfire. Wes crosses the room in three strides and kneels beside his partner, ripping through the bonds keeping him trapped.

“What, no greeting for li’l ol’ me?” Travis asks, rubbing his wrists. Despite his beating, his tone is casual, like they’re greeting each other in the morning at the precinct, like he _hasn’t_ been missing for two days.

Wes mutters something in a language of brimstone and pain, too far past the point of pretend to be concerned about speaking a human tongue. Travis lets out a slow breath, studying Wes properly for the first time since he walked into the room.

“Ah. One of those moods, huh?” He slowly rises to his feet, using the pole for more support than he probably intended. Wes hovers every inch vertical, muttering vicious deprecations against the bastards who did this when Travis has to slump against the pole once upright, face drawn tight with pain.

Travis may not understand the words, but he certainly understands the tone Wes is conveying. “I’m fine, baby,” he says, not at all reassuringly. “Just a little banged up. It’ll buff out.” He pushes upright, wobbling for a moment, but his hand comes up when Wes moves to support him. “Really, I’m fine. Just. Give me a minute. Do you smell smoke?”

His head turns toward the doorway, his foot takes one step toward the egress, and Wes feels a frantic rush of unsuppressed panic race through him.

_No,_ he admonishes though it is less a word that falls off his tongue than simple, desolate desperation. 

_No,_ he begs, in a tongue that cannot remember how to shape English, not right now. _No, do not look. Do not see what I have done. Please._

There had been men who had stood between him and Travis.

There are not any longer.

Travis continues to believe—despite everything, despite every action that says contrary—that Wes can be better. That Wes can be _good_. It’s a painful dream, but Wes craves it.

He doesn’t want to see that light fall from Travis’s eyes, as he takes in the results of Wes’s terror and rage in the other room.

The blood on his hands—both literal and figurative—is evidence enough. Travis doesn’t need to see the _bodies_.

“Wes,” Travis says, in an all-too-knowing tone, and Wes closes his eyes, wishes he could drain the ink from his gaze, wishes he had enough control to manage even a simple apology right now. But he can’t, he’s holding on by a thread as it is, too much of him is magma swirling beneath the surface and the slightest thing will send lava flowing free in a reign of terror and wrath and he needs—he _needs_—

—a hand, touching his shoulder, his neck, ghosting across the curve of his jaw, and Wes shudders and digs his fingernails into his palms, and the pain grounds him, anchors him in ways he knows the humans cannot understand, he is _made_ of pain and it locks his feet to the floor and keeps him from lashing out.

Travis should know better than to touch him when he’s this volatile. Travis has always been stupid and reckless and oh, oh, what a brave, foolish human, so fleshy and fragile and _breakable_ and Wes hisses a breath he doesn’t need as Travis’s palm settles on his cheek, and the magma in his chest swirls viciously and—ever so slightly—settles.

“Wes,” Travis whispers, voice loud in a room that reeks with the cloying silence of fear and pain. “I’m right here. Wes, look at me.”

With every effort, Wes drags his eyes open, gazes into Travis’s eyes. Travis looks tired—_exhausted_, like he’s about to fall over any second, and his face is swollen and bruised and he’s holding himself up with stubborn willpower alone.

Wes has never seen anything more beautiful.

“Wes,” Travis says again, thrice, and the magma stills and settles in the hollow of his heart, caged back where it belongs. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

There is not forgiveness in the words. Travis does not forgive murder easily, not even—_especially if_—it is done in his name. But there is understanding, and a promise, which is like a contract but all the more precious, and Wes leans into the touch on his cheek and drinks the words in like a benediction.

**Author's Note:**

> All information about black cats was found on Wikipedia, so make of that what you will.


End file.
